Imprint technology is a fine processing technology, which uses a mold having a reverse pattern of the desired fine concave-convex pattern. The mold is pressed against a transferring material on a substrate, thereby transferring the reverse pattern of the mold onto the transferring material. Here, the transferring material is a liquid resin for example. The reverse pattern of the fine concave-convex pattern can vary between a nano-scale pattern of 10 nm-level size to a 100 μm-level size. The reverse pattern is used in a wide range of field including semiconductor materials, optical materials, recording media, micro machines, biotechnology, and environmental protection.
With respect to a transferring method to transfer the reverse pattern onto the transferring material, a method which first manufactures an imprint mold in the form of a roll by winding a film mold onto a transferring roll, and then performs a roll to roll process to continuously transfer the reverse pattern onto the transferring material, can be mentioned for example.
In order to prepare the imprint mold in the form of a roll from the film mold, both ends of the film mold need be joined. As a method for joining the film mold, Patent Literature 1 discloses a technique in which the edge portions of the butted resin film are sandwiched with a pair of heaters, thereby pressure-fusing the edge portion; and a technique in which the edge portions of the resin film to be joined are overlapped, followed by pressure-fusion of the portion to be joined.